“The Deccan Plateau at night was a different proposition from the Sahyadris — flat, open, the terrain requiring endurance rather than agility, the golden grass whispering against our legs as we walked through it in single file. The moon was fuller now — three-quarters, hanging in a sky that was clearer than the coastal sky had been, the stars visible in a density that Jugnu had never seen and that made him stop, twice, to stare upward with his mouth open and his gold-flecked eyes reflecting the light of suns that had died before he was born.”